400,000 Flee Elena In 4 States

MOBILE, ALA. — More than 400,000 Gulf Coast residents from Florida to Louisiana fled inland and braced early Monday for Hurricane Elena to come ashore after the fickle storm intensified into a ``major hurricane`` packing 125 mile-per-hour winds.

The hurricane began its fifth day training its sights once again on the northern Gulf between Mobile and New Orleans, the area where its eye is expected to land by midday Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The hurricane center extended hurricane warnings overnight from Yankeetown, Fla., to Grand Isle, La., and gale warnings extended south on the Florida peninsula to Tarpon Springs.

In Mississippi, about 60,000 residents in low-lying coastal areas were being evacuated. Most of them had been ordered from their homes last week and had been allowed to return, said Bob Chapman, duty officer at the Mississippi Emergency Operations Center.

``What Elena is doing now, skirting the coast with possible landfall between Mobile and New Orleans, is our worst-case scenario,`` he said.

Early reports of damage included roofs being ripped from homes and trees and power lines being downed throughout the New Orleans region.

New Orleans Mayor Ernest Morial issued an emergency call for city police and levy workers to report. ``We cannot afford to be caught in a holiday mood,`` he said. ``This is a very severe hurricane, and we must be ready.``

Workers in New Orleans began sandbagging flood-prone areas along the Mississippi River, fearing that the storm surge would flood the city`s famed French Quarter.

Elena was classified as a Category 3 hurricane on a 1-to-5 scale of ferocity, said storm forecaster Hal Gerrish. ``This is the strongest since Alicia hit Galveston Island in 1983,`` Gerrish said.

By late Sunday, Elena had picked up speed and was on a more westerly course than it followed earlier, posing an increased threat to the Louisiana coast, the hurricane center said. The storm had spent much of the day heading for the western end of the Gulf Coast panhandle.

The storm was moving west-northwest at 12 to 15 m.p.h. late Sunday after moving north-northwest at about 10 m.p.h. for much of the day, the center said.

The hurricane center said shortly before midnight that the storm could carry 10 inches of rain to the New Orleans area.

At the Mobile Emergency Management Office, officer Bruce McCrory said about 100,000 city and county residents had fled the area, some going as far north as Birmingham. But most went to 23 shelters in town.

Earlier Sunday, southern Florida residents got a last-minute reprieve when Elena made an unexpected and sharp turn to the northwest.

For the second time in four days, residents of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Florida panhandle were ordered to flee the storm. They had returned to their homes Saturday after being evacuated Thursday and Friday.

The hurricane center extended hurricane warnings west again from Apalachicola, Fla., to Bay St. Louis, Miss., but lifted the warnings from the Tampa Bay area north to Yankeetown.

``What we`re emphasizing to people is that hurricane-force winds are occurring now from Apalachicola to Panama City,`` about 50 miles farther west in the central part of the panhandle, hurricane center forecaster Mark Zimmer said Sunday.

``Evacuation must be rushed to completion,`` the center said in a statement. ``Rising tides as much as 10 to 12 feet above normal could occur and escape routes may be cut off before midnight.``

Officials told residents in southern Louisiana`s marshy Plaquemines Parish to seek shelter in New Orleans, about 100 miles north of the Mississippi River`s mouth, and preferably another 75 miles beyond that to Baton Rouge.

About 13,000 of the parish`s 20,000 residents had been evacuated under a similar order last week. Several hundred evacuations were ordered Sunday in adjacent St. Bernard Parish.

An emergency was declared in New Orleans, meaning that those living in low-lying areas in the eastern part of the city were urged to seek shelter on higher ground.

About 250,000 people in the five Florida panhandle counties were ordered to evacuate Sunday by Gov. Bob Graham, said Bob Nave, an official with the Department of Emergency Management. Alabama officials estimated 175,000 people were ordered to evacuate Sunday.

Evacuation orders also were in effect for Mississippi`s three coastal counties, where 50,000 people had fled when Elena approached late Thursday.